Synergy:mySynergySports.com (looks like I can't link directly to the page. You can see player data for free though, so type in his name in the box and click on the defense tab). It goes a little slow.

His and-ones are up to 4 now btw, after the last few games were posted (they previously only logged through WAS).

Singler's overall foul rate is really low at 3.1% of his man's possessions. That is 7 shooting fouls on the season on his man with 4 and 1's added to that.

He's forced 21 turnovers and here is how they convert on him when they get their shot off:

53-123 from 2-point range (.431)

18-69 from 3-point range (.261)

Overall, .82 ppp. Besides Jorts, this is the best we have at forcing misses. Bynum is at .81, but he allows a higher shooting percentage and gets his figure down through his high steal rate (almost 20% of his man's possessions). Josh Smith is up to 0.98 mainly because they drain 3's on him all day long. Up to .398 from deep against JS with the updated games.

I'm just saying that I can live with a few and-1's because they are the result of him challenging 200+ shots and forcing such a high miss rate.

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Players don't just foul the man they're guarding nor do they only score against their assigned defender. When you rotate and fail to pick up your end of the bargain, technically, someone else's man scored. Does that site also track missed rotations and late help defense when it's YOUR responsibility to pick up a different player. Also, there is NO WAY Singler has only give up 4 and ones through 30-something games. I call BS on that. I might have some time on Sunday, but I could probably find more than 3 and ones from Singler in the last 10 games.

Here is my logging experiment with this game as I took Lee's suggestion (obviously really starved for another game).
For each PHO score, I tried to analyze the play and assign blame. I either give 1 blame to a player or 2 half blames to 2 different players if it was arguable. Of course some were even more nebulous, but that's why I'm including a narrative for each. Some took about 5 replays to try to track the root of the problem.

Made baskets:

Poss#. Pts: Blame- narrative

3: Smith- BJ was getting posted up by Dragic. JS left his man on the perimeter to come help needlessly. Kick out and wide open attempt.

2: Pope- Green drove past him and dunked. Screen was coming and Pope started getting ready for it, but Green took off as he was leaning over.

2: Monroe/ Jennings- Complicated sequence. Got blocked on offense. DET recovered on D, but mismatched pairings. BJ failed to switch on P&R and left man open on arc. Monroe was caught in no man's land and couldn't commit to either. Plumlee cut and got easy layup.

2: Smith/ Monroe- Complicated sequence. Det missed and D couldn't get fully set. Drumm was on PG on perimeter. Monroe helped down low unnecessarily and Pope was left to cover 2 men on the perimeter. Ball was kicked to wide open Green. He drew the D and then drove to the rim. Smith could have taken charge or challenged shot, but he ducked out of the way and conceded the layup without resistance.

2: Drummond- Plumlee boxed Dre out under hoop without the ball. PG fed him and he got semi easy finish. Dre still challenged shot, but it went in.

2: Smith- P&R at perimeter. Stuck hit hard by pick that he had no chance of fighting through. Smith was in position to stop Stuck's man from getting past FT line, but he did weak reach in move and it resulted in clear path to rim. Dre left man to stop drive at hoop, but ball was dropped to Dre's man for easy bucket. Stuck and Singler both left their men to help, but couldn't get there.

2: Jennings- He gambled for steal on inbounds from side out and his man had clear path to rim. Dre stopped shot, but dropped off to Dre's man for easy bucket.

2: Monroe- Plumlee hit FT line J. GM sagged for no reason as we already had the paint packed.

3: Jennings/ Monroe- In transition D, Jennings gambled for a steal and Monroe had to switch to Dragic. Shake and bake isolation 3 pt make.

3: Monroe- Pope was guarding his man in the post and Monroe left Frye on the perimeter to go help. Shouldn't have.

3: Singler/ Monroe- Singler drove to hoop and was blocked (he fell out of bounds). Monroe got OReb and went back up with it- Blocked. 3 on 2 fast break with neither KS or GM able to help.

3: Monroe- GM just got disoriented in traffic and Frye sprinted out to the arc for an open shot.

2: Jennings- Bad turnover (point blank steal way outside arc). Then BJ gambled trying to steal it back and was left in the dust. Fast break layup.

2: Singler/ Stuckey- Weird play. Small ball lineup in. KS on Frye getting posted up. Stuckey on Tucker. Stuckey leaves his man to go help Singler and helps cause missed shot... but Tucker in perfect position to get Oreb and putback. BJ picked up Tucker, but was badly mismatched on the rebound. Giving .5 blame to Singler, becuase it looks like he needed the help. (really a small ball tragedy here).

2: Singler/ Drummond- Weird play. Singler had Frye all the way down the floor on D. Drummond in paint alone without a man and Tucker alone at 3-point line. Singler realized the play was screwed and he ran out to get Tucker, who easily then drove past him. Drummond was in position to take charge or challenge shot, but he backed away. (broken possession)

2: Drummond- Burned by PG on P&R. Was in position to stop drive and got juked.

2: Jennings- Bad turnover. He was only one to stop the break and didn't/ couldn't.

3: Jennings- Got burned by his man. Once penetration occurred, defense collapsed to stop the PG, who had 2 choices of open men to pass to on the arc. Open 3.

2: Singler/ Jennings- Singler committed turnover on offense, which led to 3 on 3 fast break. Jennings had 10' lead on ball handler who went coast to coast with no passes.

2: Jennings- On P&R, BJ chose to take Frye w/out the ball when he didn't really have to (is was easier and he went with it). Frye posted him up. Small ball lineup, so mismatch was what PHO was seeking.

3: Smith- Sagged unnecessarily and left Tucker open in corner. Open 3.

Shooting fouls:

Villanueva/ Drummond: Stuck committed good foul. P&R on perimeter and Stuck got picked hard. Man drove to hoop. CV in no man's land and was worthless. Drum could have also stopped drive, but did weak reach in instead. Stuckey trailed his man and hacked him intentionally from behind.

Jennings/ Singler: KCP committed foul from behind after OReb. Sequence that led to it: Jennings let his man drive by him. Drum helped and caused airball miss. Singler's man snuck past him to get reb and shooting foul. Singler could have boxed him out, but he was watching the ball. If shot hit rim, we probably would have got reb.

Villanueva: In transition, CV was back and Jennings was trailing his man. He needed help and was pointing at his man to notify our bigs to help. Man drove right at CV who wasn't guarding anybody and got hacked.

Jennings: Green posted up BJ. Quick spin move left him in the dust. Singler fouled Green on his dunk attempt. Good foul.

Jennings: Fouled Dragic in transition. Drummond was heads up and blocked shot after foul (probably was going in).

No blame: In normal transition opp, PHO took quick 3, missed. It was chaos/ cluster. They got lucky reb and Stuck hacked them.

Smith: Frye was switched and was posting up Pope. Smith came to help, but fell for pump fake and fouled Frye.

Bynum: Fast break. WB fouled Dragic from behind as he was going for the block. However, Singler was in position and was already challenging the layup nicely.

Smith: This was the puke inducing 3-point foul at the end of the game. Smith got switched and was guarding Green in the paint. He fell asleep and Green sprinted to the arc, got the pass and took open shot. Smith fouled him as he got there desperately late.

Players don't just foul the man they're guarding nor do they only score against their assigned defender. When you rotate and fail to pick up your end of the bargain, technically, someone else's man scored. Does that site also track missed rotations and late help defense when it's YOUR responsibility to pick up a different player. Also, there is NO WAY Singler has only give up 4 and ones through 30-something games. I call BS on that. I might have some time on Sunday, but I could probably find more than 3 and ones from Singler in the last 10 games.

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You may be right. I'm just using the only source I can find that tracks it. I would say that in a typical game, Synergy screws up 3-5 events (out of a few hundred).

As far as assigning blame, it's really hard to do. They do an OK job by going with the players primary assignment and then adapting to obvious switches, etc. But when it gets messy, I think that they don't assign blame to anybody (judging by the fact that each player has more offensive possessions than defensive ones, which is impossible). They post a video clip of every single play so that you can review them. For instance, you can click on Singler's allowed P&R baskets and watch them in succession. You can also watching things in succession like every single steal. The bookmarking that they do has to be really valuable to team's scouting depts.

I would imagine that every NBA team does what I just tried to do above, but times 10 after each game. They should have a very good idea of where things are going wrong and right. The exercise above really made me realize how another year or two of playing together would help our team defensively. As somebody recently said, our helper is not getting helped. That cohesion just isn't there and we have young guys that are new to the NBA and each other. Very young starting 5.

Here is my logging experiment with this game as I took Lee's suggestion (obviously really starved for another game).
For each PHO score, I tried to analyze the play and assign blame. I either give 1 blame to a player or 2 half blames to 2 different players if it was arguable. Of course some were even more nebulous, but that's why I'm including a narrative for each. Some took about 5 replays to try to track the root of the problem.

Made baskets:

Poss#. Pts: Blame- narrative

3: Smith- BJ was getting posted up by Dragic. JS left his man on the perimeter to come help needlessly. Kick out and wide open attempt.

2: Pope- Green drove past him and dunked. Screen was coming and Pope started getting ready for it, but Green took off as he was leaning over.

2: Monroe/ Jennings- Complicated sequence. Got blocked on offense. DET recovered on D, but mismatched pairings. BJ failed to switch on P&R and left man open on arc. Monroe was caught in no man's land and couldn't commit to either. Plumlee cut and got easy layup.

Total = 107.5 (actual score was 108, and I assigned no blame to one foul. I might be off by a point or so overall).

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1> Can't always assign blame. Smith was off his guy, but the whole Piston defense had collapsed inside, giving up multiple outside shot attempt options. This one is a coaching thing, not an individual player blame. And note, the strategy did not need changing at that moment. This was the only bucket Phoenix scored in the opening several minutes of the game as the Pistons jumped out to a double digit lead.

2. Pope got burnt pure and simple. He failed at this duty to slow the perimeter guy down enough to give the bigs inside time to help.

3. Guard misplayed pick and roll, should have switched. A mismatch is better than not even guarding the guy. Two guys more use to playing with each other could have timed things better, with our big following theirs a bit quicker as the guard taking over outside. This leaves the other team with at least having to make a jumper vs. a layup. In any case, in this situation, with the communication not there yet on exactly how to pull this off, the guard should have addressed the big at the basket.

4. The shot was not that contested. Pope never really caught up all the way to get back in any kind of position to address the shot.

Its late. I will post more of this later. PS, I got both the defensive plays and offensive plays, but I will just go with matching this post. Anyway, as far as Singler goes, the first 8 times I have him in my notes for the first half, 7 are positive. Only his travel was a negative. (and even that was an attempt to score inside, which I always like.) Lots of good stuff from him as he goes to plus 14 at one point in the game. Later though, he ends up negative, and the mentions of him go mostly bad.

The exercise above really made me realize how another year or two of playing together would help our team defensively. As somebody recently said, our helper is not getting helped. That cohesion just isn't there and we have young guys that are new to the NBA and each other. Very young starting 5.

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I think the problem with the starting 5 is that 3 of them don't give a crap what happens on D and 3.5-4 of them equate going for a steal as playing D.

You would not have used the word gambling as much as you did in your game tracking post if you were reviewing a casino opening for a newspaper.

I think the problem with the starting 5 is that 3 of them don't give a crap what happens on D and 3.5-4 of them equate going for a steal as playing D.

You would not have used the word gambling as much as you did in your game tracking post if you were reviewing a casino opening for a newspaper.

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Agreed. A good team can get away with a bad defender or possibly two if they have some really good ones to help clean up mistakes. The Pistons currently have too many that fall between weak and mediocre on defense. Good NBA teams give up less than 100 ppg. The Pistons give up 102.6. It's a very simple and crude metric, but I think it speaks volumes for the team's current ills.

I'd like to see the breakouts of how we compare after made offensive baskets and how we compare to the league after misses. The second would improve if we just cleaned up our offensive efficiency a bit. I don't know how we rank in each, but I think the data is avail.

Also, I'm not sure if the gambling on d is working. We do get a lot of steals and those usually lead to easy buckets for us. The counter point is that failed gambles look bad and give up points on the defensive end. Have to get an overall blend.

My gut right now is that our true half court defense is better than our true half court offense.

Also, I'm not sure if the gambling on d is working. We do get a lot of steals and those usually lead to easy buckets for us. The counter point is that failed gambles look bad and give up points on the defensive end. Have to get an overall blend.

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It isn't. I think they'd be much better served staying in front of their man and playing the percentages of forcing guys to make shots. That is work though and I don't think a lot of these guys like that.

It just bugs me when a Piston player is too darn lazy to put a hand in the opposing players face to try to distract a shot..... even more troubling is when it is a big like Monroe or Smith's who's long arms could even block the shot. Seems like they would rather turn and face the bucket to grab a board than stop the shot.

These young Pistons players developed the culture under Frank and Kuester and it is up to Mo and his philosophy/coaching team to change it and 103 ppg they are giving up after 38 games means that they haven't perfected it yet........ Remember just 10 years ago when teams were trying the score at least 75 points on us....that wasn't all Ben...that was team effort driven by the coach.

Here is my logging experiment with this game as I took Lee's suggestion (obviously really starved for another game).

Made baskets:

Poss#. Pts: Blame- narrative

3: Smith- BJ was getting posted up by Dragic. JS left his man on the perimeter to come help needlessly. Kick out and wide open attempt.

2: Pope- Green drove past him and dunked. Screen was coming and Pope started getting ready for it, but Green took off as he was leaning over.

2: Monroe/ Jennings- Complicated sequence. Got blocked on offense. DET recovered on D, but mismatched pairings. BJ failed to switch on P&R and left man open on arc. Monroe was caught in no man's land and couldn't commit to either. Plumlee cut and got easy layup.

2: Smith/ Monroe- Complicated sequence. Det missed and D couldn't get fully set. Drumm was on PG on perimeter. Monroe helped down low unnecessarily and Pope was left to cover 2 men on the perimeter. Ball was kicked to wide open Green. He drew the D and then drove to the rim. Smith could have taken charge or challenged shot, but he ducked out of the way and conceded the layup without resistance.

2: Drummond- Plumlee boxed Dre out under hoop without the ball. PG fed him and he got semi easy finish. Dre still challenged shot, but it went in.

2: Smith- P&R at perimeter. Stuck hit hard by pick that he had no chance of fighting through. Smith was in position to stop Stuck's man from getting past FT line, but he did weak reach in move and it resulted in clear path to rim. Dre left man to stop drive at hoop, but ball was dropped to Dre's man for easy bucket. Stuck and Singler both left their men to help, but couldn't get there.

2: Jennings- He gambled for steal on inbounds from side out and his man had clear path to rim. Dre stopped shot, but dropped off to Dre's man for easy bucket.

2: Monroe- Plumlee hit FT line J. GM sagged for no reason as we already had the paint packed.

3: Jennings/ Monroe- In transition D, Jennings gambled for a steal and Monroe had to switch to Dragic. Shake and bake isolation 3 pt make.

3: Monroe- Pope was guarding his man in the post and Monroe left Frye on the perimeter to go help. Shouldn't have.

5. Will not assign specific blame on this one.

6. This was Drummond. He was not boxed out as much as he incorrectly tried to face guard. If he had stepped between the basket and Plumlee, all he had to do is delay the shot by half a second and it would have been a 3 second call on Plumlee.

7. agreed.

8. Stuckey should have not gotten stopped that hard on a pick. This is typical for Stuckey, not negotiating around picks well at all. I count this one on him.

9. no game footage to look at.

10. Agree

11. Its harsh to blame Drums on that one. I just put it down to bad fast break defense by the team. Could Drums have really gotten down fast enough to affect anything? He does actually get steals often, I will give him the benefit of a doubt on this one.

12. Agree

13. Not contested that well.

14. Jennings should have switched to the big. Here, you obviously can't say he could have stopped the guy, but he could have knocked the pass away, or could have done just enough until help came. So, I will blame it on Jennings, but the team has to have better strategies for this kind of thing. (its called defensive rotation.)

15.Ok defense.

16. Jennings and Singler were both back. It was a good move by Dragic indeed, but either could have slowed Dragic down by picking him up quicker. I split the blame, though its hard to put the blame on the guys who at least got back on defense.

16A You do not have the one where Jennings got beat instantaneously, not giving any time for help.

17. agree

18., Yes, on Bynum, but really, coach has a too short player in who really can not guard Dragic at all.

19. Yeah, that was a head scratcher.

20. You have to blame Monroe, but he did have a reason, as he was helping inside. But when you help, you got to have that knack for recovering.

21. I am going 100% Monroe here. I will not penalize Jennnings for going for a steal here. I know Monroe is not good at guarding the perimeter, but he needs to practice. Meanwhile, I will continue to blame him if he gets shot over by a guard, and give him credit if that guard misses the shot.

22. Pope was picked. Monroe picked up his guy. It was Popes error in not switching to Frye.

I'm not really "blaming". Just trying to find the most responsible one or two parties.

Every team scores close to 100 points per game, so there is some level of unspoppable-ness to nba offenses. The rules are in their favor.

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Just hobby for me. Breaking down defensive and offensive plays. Anyway, let me know if you have the time to look at any plays where I have disagreed with you. If not, not much point in me continuing to post my feedback. But note, I really like this kind of thing, and will keep responding to what you write if you indicate that it is useful to you. Let me know.

As far as "blame." In the Phoenix game, which we won, I count at a minimum 28 points that can be accredited to the fact Singler is in the game. And this is being generous, because you could come up with 40 points where he was indirectly or directly responsible for the opponent scoring.

Now, whose fault is it that Singler was in there causing the other team to get easier scores so much of this game. Not Singler. He did not force his coach to play him. Singler is a very limited player, too slow, no ups, too weak, too short, who has no business guarding pretty much any NBA player you could name. If he was a knock down type 3 point shooter, who could actually get his shot off when defended, you could overlook his defensive problems. But he has had one multiple 3 point game as far as my memory goes back this season. His offense is not making up for his lack of D.

To be more specific, I got Singler down for 19 points given up where he failed to guard someone, so that person scored. In addition, 2 points for fouling needlessly when we were in the penalty. 2 points off his turn. 2 points for being in as the small forward, and not being able to function as an inside defender. Believe me, I would give the same blame to Pope, who is too short to play small forward, or Stuckey, in the same situation.

In addition, I got him for several instances of simply being too small to contest rebounds. Lots of those cases indeed, and if you figure that a real small forward might have actually gotten just a few, giving us some more possessions, and them less, well, lets just charge him 8 more points for that. But that is still not 40. Until you factor in his lack of defensive capability in general that messes up our defensive schemes when our subs are in. But hey, lets just use the lower, 28 point figure, and call it good.

Now, Singler does good stuff too. For this game, I got him down for 25 positive mentions. Compared to 28 negative. (Drummond, for comparison, has 40 positive mentions to 5 bad. Smith, its 24/8. Monroe 21/15)

But note, I expect any small forward we use to do a lot of good stuff in a game. Just note, Singler has as many negative mentions as Drummond, Smith, and Monroe combined.

So maybe you think this is all biased? Pope, one of my favorite players, I got for the worst ration of positive to negative, 8 / 13. Bynum, a player I do not like at all, I got for 15 /10. No, there is no bias. Just a simple result of watching the plays, yes, a whole lot multiple times in frame by frame until I have a very clear picture of the play, and writing down the results.

Lee, I simply do not understand your analysis of Singler. He is our best perimeter defender, by far. He's not strong on the ball, but he's not weak. He's one of two of our players who actually closes out on opposing shooters, KCP being the other one. He always makes the right pass. He moves without the ball. He blocks out a man so that his teammate can get a rebound. He runs the floor. He makes smart plays. He makes hustle plays.